Carl Kolchak

Gallery

Real Name

Carl Kolchak

Characteristics

Gender

Male

First appearance

The Kolchak Papers (1972)

History[edit source]

Biography

Carl Kolchak, born Karel Kolchak, started his career in journalism by serving in World War II as a copyboy. After the end of the war, he graduated from the University of Columbia and became a journalist; Kolchak worked in many cities, like Chicago, New York, Washington, and Boston, each time being fired due to his outspoken and abrasive personality. Demon in Lace implies he was a war reporter, as he admits to a Vietnam veteran he was interviewing he had served in two wars, and commiserates by admitting that during his time at war he got to know the “stench of death”. In Kolchak: Tales of the Night Stalker he reveals he served i n Vietnam.

Las Vegas

By the time of his first encounter with the supernatural, Kolchak was working in Las Vegas for the Daily News, in the first of many jobs where his superior was Tony Vincenzo. Kolchak had a girlfriend, prostitute Gail Foster, and had stayed in the city long enough to accumulate a large amount of contacts and an enmity with local police officials Sheriff Warren A. Butcher and Chief Ed Masterson.

Through his contacts, Kolchak learned of the murder of a prostitute who had the blood drained from her body. Kolchak, sensing a story that could save his waning career, investigated, and found that this was the work of a serial killer, who Kolchak believed fancied himself a vampire. Butcher and Masterson refused to believe Kolchak, in spite of pathologist Robert Makurji noting that Kolchak’s theory was the most accurate. Foster eventually helped Kolchak come to the conclusion that the killer was a genuine vampire; this theory was proven accurate when the killer exhibited superhuman strength and fought off countless police officers, and confirmed to him completell when the killer was revealed to be Janos Skorzeny, who by all accounts should be a 70 year-old man.

Kolchak brokered a deal with the police for exclusive coverage of the killing spree in exchange for Kolchak’s help. Fearful the police will renege on their deal and ever intrepid, Kolchak used a tip from his informant Mickey Crawford to discover and investigate Skorzeny’s house. Kolchak remains in the House when he discovers Skorzeny is keeping a woman to use as a perpetual blood bank, only for Skorzeny to arrive while he tries to free the woman. Kolchak flees from Skorzeny, and his friend FBI agent Bernie Jenks arrives and helps Kolchak subdue Skorzeny as the sun rises; Kolchak then stakes the vampire.

Expecting to break the story and finally get his big break, Kolchak proposes to Foster and publishes his story, only to be called by Jenks to report to his office. There, Masterson and Butcher reveal they have forged murder charges against Kolchak for his killing of Skorzeny, and have printed a falsified story under his name rather than the real one. The two force Kolchak to leave Las Vegas or be tried, and when Kolchak asks if he can say goodbye to Gail, Butcher smugly informs him that he had previously forced Foster to leave Vegas as well, and that she had left while Kolchak was meeting with them. Some time later, Kolchak has become broke from a futile search to find Gail which he has given up, taking a job as an agent for an actor (from which he was later fired) and he now lives in a motel, having written a book based off of the true events that he hopes to publish. He sold the book to former LA newsman turned author Jeff Rice, who published it. Though the book was a hit, it was widely disbelieved, and Kolchak was forced to flee before getting a share of the profits when D.A. Tom Paine sent ADA Rupert Koster were sent to silence him. The book was widely dismissed as fiction or the ratings of a madman.

Seattle

Some time later, Kolchak has traveled to Seattle. During an argument with another reporter, he runs into Vincenzo; Carl promptly wheedles his way into being hired by Vincenzo as a reporter for the Daily Chronicle, with their superior Llewellyn Crossbinder agreeing to employ him so long as Kolchak doesn’t pursue “nonsense” and writes only “respectable journalism“. Kolchak‘s first assignment is to investigate the murder of stripper Ethel Parker, who had been brutally strangled to death. Consulting her coworkers Louise Harper and Charisma Beauty, Kolchak finds no possible motive to kill her or any information about the killer. Kolchak bribes a coroner into revealing that Parker’s throat had been crushed, her attacker had to have had superhuman strength, and a hypodermic needle inserted into her forehead had drained blood from her.

After the murder of Gail Manning, another stripper, Kolchak consults his coworker Titus Berry and discovers that similar killings had happened 21 years ago. Following another murder, Kolchak arrives at the scene of the crime and watches the strangler fend off several officers and escape. Kolchak consults a witness, who claims that the killer resembled a rotten corpse. Kolchak had a sketch artist’s rendition of the killer published, earring him the ire of Captain Schubert.

Berry and Kolchak later discover that the killings had happened every 21 years, with the description of the killer always being that he resembled a rotting corpse. Kolchak and Harper investigated together, and the two explored the Seattle Underground, which Kolchak theorized was the killer’s lair. All they found, however, was an eccentric homeless man known only as The Tramp. Louise pointed Kolchak towards anthropologist Professor Hester Crabwell, who told him about the legends of an elixir of life created by alchemists; the most important ingredient to this elixir was human blood.

Vincenzo predictably refused to publish the story, but Kolchak pursued it. Berry informs him that the killer is likely Union Army surgeon Richard Malcolm, who ran a hospital that was destroyed in the Great Seattle Fire. The Great Mercy Hospital was built over the clinic by a Dr. Malcom Richards. Kolchak went to the hospital, and, by vandalising a painting of Dr. Richards realized that Richards and Malcolm were the same person. Unfortunately, he was arrested, and in spite of his protests to Crossbinder, Schubert, and Vincenzo about his theories on the killer, he was disbelieved and, though Vincenzo stopped him from being fired, Kolchak was reassigned. Kolchak ignored this and instead ventured underneath the Great Mercy Hospital, discovering Malcolm’s lair. Finding the corpses of the Tramp and Malcolm’s family, Kolchak runs into Malcolm himself.

Kolchak manages to convince Malcolm into telling him his story before killing him. Malcolm agrees, and tells Kolchak of his past and takes him to where he makes the elixir, which he is attempting to make permanent. When he reveals he only needs to drink one more to complete The p, Kolchak smashes the elixir. Malcolm rapidly ages and attacks Kolchak, only for several officers led by Schubert, who had been called by Harper arrive. Malcolm commits suicide by jumping out of a window. Shortly afterwards, Kolchak is fires by Vincenzo, and the two vow never to help each other again, only for Vincenzo to be fired by Crossbinder shortly afterwards. Kolchak drives Vincenzo and a bitter Harper to New York, all of them having been run out of Seattle; Kolchak rants on how he will publish his story while Vincenzo tries to convince him his story is dead, and Harper screams at him for ruining her life.

Kolchak later submitted the story to Rice, who published it, and his plans to get a job in New York went bust.^[1]

Chicago

Kolchak is now employed at the Independent News Service, working under Vincenzo once more, in Chicago. Kolchak has been working in Chicago for a few years, having established a relationship of mutual hatred between him and the police force. Kolchak has several different coworkers aside from Vincenzo; Emily Cowles, an advice columnist and crosswords puzzlist who he likes and gets along with, with Horror in the Heights revealing she is the one person he trusts completely; Ron Updyke, his rival and exact opposite, who he constantly pranks and insults; and Monique Marmelstein, who he somewhat dislikes, but generally tolerated and even occasionally gets along with. Kolchak repeatedly stumbles upon supernatural phenomena that he promptly investigates, and tries to stop. Kolchak often abandons stories he is supposed to be covering to investigate these supernatural occurrences, much to Vincenzo’s anger.